10”x10” Acrylic and gold leaf on panel

A couple of weeks ago we did an ancestral mapping weekend in school and afterwards, I created this piece from an old photograph of my great grandfather Chief Fong Pufong taken by German explorers which was shared with me by my Cameroonian family.

To my understanding, our last name, Poufong roughly translates as “From the King” and our family decend from royal lineage in the West Region in Cameroon, West Africa.

The photograph was old and blurry so I had to imagine a lot of his features. There is a lot about Cameroon culture I have yet to learn but there is something magic and healing about taking time to sit with the ancestors and letting them guide us.

The evening I made this I sat at my desk with some paint and asked for some inspiration and this is what he showed me.